Objective 3Road use education and engagement

Contents

In 2016–17, we continued to drive a change in the culture and attitude to road safety through Join the Drive to Save Lives advertising campaigns, community engagement, online and social media programs.

Join the Drive to Save Lives

Our Join the Drive to Save Lives campaigns tackled key issues like speeding and road safety over the holidays, and targeted high risk groups including motorcycle riders, young drivers and their families.

'Protect your P plater'

The 'Protect your P Plater' campaign targeted the parents of new drivers encouraging them to stay involved beyond the learner phase. The series of online videos featuring real families performed strongly, with more than one million views of the advertisement, more than 900 shares or re-tweets and 1000 comments on social media.

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'Sixth Sense'

Motorcycle riders make up just under five per cent of registered vehicles, but nearly a quarter of our road toll. The 'Sixth Sense' campaign included a range of educational online resources for riders featuring champion Mick Doohan. It reached over 3.61 million people through social media and received more than 52,000 comments, shares and likes.

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'Let's change the way we look at speed'

Speeding is one of the major killers on our roads. 'Let's change the way we look at speed' aims to change drivers' attitudes towards low level speeding, so it is no longer socially acceptable. The campaign had a strong impact on those who saw it.

Around eight in 10 people said it reminded them about the effect their driving could have on others and they were more aware that speeds just over the limit are enough to kill.

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'My road toll'

We also challenged why the community accepts trauma as just part of everyday life through a series of moving videos, featuring real people. This campaign aimed to put a human face to the road toll figure through a series on online videos sharing the stories of eight Queenslanders who lost their lives on our roads. Their stories, told by their friends and families, are a powerful reminder to stay safe on our roads.

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'Memories'

This campaign tapped into the sense of community and goodwill in the lead up to Christmas and over the holiday periods. The campaign aimed to influence community attitudes by presenting relatable, nostalgic footage to remind road users about the part we all play in road safety. This message clearly got through with eight in 10 people surveyed saying they were more likely to consider road safety since seeing the ads.

We also have a strong virtual community, with more almost 130,000 fans, who help us keep road safety on the agenda.

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We were proud to win the gold award for our Dry Driver campaign run over 2015–16 at the International Safety Media Awards, held at the 12th world conference on injury prevention and safety promotion in Finland.

Targeting high risk behaviours

The department continues to address high risk driving behaviour, particularly those known as the 'Fatal Five'. These risky behaviours continue to be discouraged through targeted public education campaigns and high visibility police operations including random breath testing and roadside drug testing.

The fatal five and the initiatives this year are listed below:

SpeedingDrivers who continue to speed on Queensland roads are being targeted through education by providing facts on the dangers of speeding and through enforcement for those who ignore the dangers of speeding. The speed conversation document was released which details the government's plans to reduce speed related crashes in the future.

Drink and drug drivingTMR released a drink driving discussion paper as part of a review of penalties and sanctions for high risk offenders. The discussion paper included requests for public responses on initiatives such as referring drink drivers to screening and counselling services, and drug drivers to diversionary programs. The public response was excellent with 3052 completed surveys and nine written submissions received.

We are now reviewing the responses and considering a number of changes that together will encourage long term behaviour change in drink driving.

Failure to wear a seatbeltIn a 2016 survey, 96 per cent of Queensland motorists indicated that they always wore a seatbelt – an increase from 2015 (94 per cent). For the small group who do not wear seatbelts, positive messages about seatbelts and child restraints regularly appear on the 'Join the Drive' Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Driving while tired or fatiguedResearch and planning was conducted in 2016–17 for the next campaign which will raise awareness of the dangers of driving while tired.

Driver distraction or inattention.In an effort to reduce driver distraction, the government introduced double demerit points if two or more mobile phone offences are committed within one year, and are further investigating what else can be introduced to discourage people from driving distracted.

We have worked with young people to develop messages for young people by young people through our second youth Co-Lab innovation challenge in October, with the winning team creating the 'Chin Up' campaign, recently released on social media.

Further, TMR continues its targeted research to improve understanding of key risk groups and behaviours, this year commencing evaluations of the Queensland graduated licensing system, the alcohol ignition interlock program and studying safety attitudes and perceptions of motorcyclists.

Around half of all serious speed related crashes happen at less than 10 kilometres per hour above the speed limit.